Answer to Question 1
Adolescents are widely regarded as impulsive and prone to seek immediate pleasure, as compared to adults. Impulsiveness is a problem if it leads to risky driving, drinking, sex, spending sprees, and so forth.
Many studies have found that adolescent humans show stronger brain responses than older adults do when anticipating rewards, and weaker responses in the areas of the prefrontal cortex responsible for inhibiting behaviors. That type of evidence influenced the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that adolescents are less responsible for their actions than adults are, because they are less able to restrain their impulses. However, although the prefrontal cortex is indeed less mature in adolescents, its immaturity is at best only part of the explanation for impulsivity. Adolescents are not incapable of restraining their impulses, and in many laboratory tests they inhibit impulses just as well as adults. The heightened impulsivity occurs almost entirely in social situations when adolescents are trying to impress their peers. Adolescents are highly responsive to social support and social influence.
Answer to Question 2
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Brain scans showing the white-matter pathways involved in everyday learning:
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